191–200 of 1001 posts
Just remember that there are also the people who sell shovels in a gold rush —- or for the modern times, start an exchange during a crypto craze. There are also investors and funds. Their maths looks different.
Don’t be just a roll of the dice in someone else’s numbers game.
Whatever you read online often has this goal: extract time and money out of you. So, whatever you expose yourself to online may skew the perspective on things for some purpose.
A job however, is a balancing act between time, skill and money. The purpose is to satisfy your hierarchy of needs. A company is the same but with more moving parts, but the reality is often different from what is being said. So, in such an environment, I chose to never attach a deeper meaning to it - there is nothing special to it, unless I believe in it. I don't base my identity around any economic output, numbers or whatever my job title is at the moment. Running a startup would just mean more attachment to one thing.
You have been sold on an idea and emotion, that has little basis in reality. This dissonance ripples through your entire being and it's taking a toll on you. A lot of people failed before you and you never hear from them. This experience however is necessary to shift your perception towards what is real.
Having this detachment from what the consensus is, gives you the ability to see the things the way they are. You won't be stressed out when things go wrong, because your definition of wrong stops adapting. A startup ceases to be a vessel to be successful, because the very definition of successful stays within your intention and not what the world seems to define as successful.
By getting rid of this, you can focus on whats real and what matters. You move out of your head and start observing and acting in the real world. You don't think of what should be - skewed by perception, but what could be - by letting your experience of life take over. This is the basis of creating things in my opinion.
You won't be paralyzed by the things that people tell you should be right (like ticking off a checklist to build an audience for an ROI), but rather what makes the most amount of sense from your POV.
I take things very slowly. As a developer I used to do very complicated things as fast as possible, but over time I embraced simplicity and balance over everything.
Some things are out of your control and it's important to see when your area of influence stops and when you are being sold an idea that plays with that perception of reality.
I managed to rest in myself and don't care "if I make it". My definition of "making it" is a roof over my head, food on the table, hygiene, transportation, physical activity, social interaction and time for myself.
My value system is true or false, not a range between 0 and infinite. If a car gets me to a place for example, it does what its expected to do, I don't believe in the bells and whistles I'm being presented. So my intention is to keep this car driving and not how this car compares or relates to anything. It is a tool and stays a tool. Success in my books starts with a true in it's foundation and not what the treadmill of 10, 50 or 100 in all it's facets sums up to, if you know what I mean. Realizing this gave me a different perspective on dreams. I saw how some dreams were never mine to begin with.
Whether I will achieve something the world tells me is successful now or in 10 years or if at all ultimately doesn't matter. I'm in for the experience and let nature unfold. I do what works out for me.
When you layer this sense of security up, you can start replacing layers by moving or switching jobs or trying to launch a company, because your life won't fall apart and you have this eternal rest and trust in yourself. No idea can consume you or act on different layers. You can still get a good nights rest, because things stay where they are.
I hope I could explain my perspective and give some insights...
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I wasted a decade of my life on the notion that you can bootstrap a startup. It is hard mode and the folks that are so dismissive of VC funding should have that disclaimer.
You can bootstrap a startup, but not every startup. And woe to you if you are bootstrapped and some VC funded club starts poaching your customers with a product subsidized by their financiers. I wrote about these options long ago: https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo...
"Living well is the best revenge". And if you're someone who has the skills to turn their time into significant value-add, seeking revenge is an opportunity cost that undoubtedly counts as "living poorly".
[caveat: I have had to litigate on occasion, but (a) that is something where hours spent are indirect, via counsel, and (b) it's not exactly "living well", either]
Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"? As a group they seem the people with the least amount of money to spend on products, and are some of the most cheapskate people on the planet. Here's some advice: if you want to make money selling a software product, sell to people who are able and willing to spend money on it.
> Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"? They’re influencers. That’s why people want their attention. I think it kinda has the look of a cool lifestyle from the outside (to some). They’re digital nomads and they travel to cool places and meeting cool people and tweeting big graphs that go up and to the right. They disavow lots of possessions (again a nomad) while profe…
I was looking at some forums and it seems that the first question after someone arrives in a new place is "where do i meet you guys (digital nomads)". It seems to me that it's a closed group of people selling things to each other.
Tbc, I don't have anything against this kind of living, and in fact i d like it to be easier to work in other countries. Unfortunately, even within the EU you can't work in another country.
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> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. And for anything with bigger ambitions than a lifestyle business, don’t forget connections. Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford. Just look at the “PayPal mafia” to see how inbred tech investing can be. Not that most entrepreneurs need or should expect VC funding, but this is HN, run by a VC. You can totally run a business and be…
I wasted a decade of my life on the notion that you can bootstrap a startup. It is hard mode and the folks that are so dismissive of VC funding should have that disclaimer.
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This . I really dislike the term "lifestyle business". What's wrong with a stable long-term business that makes founders and customers happy? Why does every business need GROWTH GROWTH GROWTH at all costs, even if the result is a net negative for customers? I sometimes explain to customers that if my business were VC-funded, it would grow and be developed much faster, but in the end there would need to be an exit and…
Seconded. I personally try to never use the phrase 'lifestyle business'. Instead I use the phrase 'bootstrapped business', because that is what it is. You have bootstrapped the business yourself organically over time instead of at a fast pace of growth with VC money.
A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…
One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.
Most startup founders work other jobs while building their project - if they can afford to fail, it's because they have that other job. But they're spending those four hours (and many, many more) on labors of love.
Sure, there are some trustfund kids who get to play founder and have the odds stacked in their favor, but that's neither the soul nor the joy of starting your own project. In my experience most of those types are miserable even in success.
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That depends on the person, really. When you are younger or have rich parents you can afford yourself larger risks and that in turn has a positive effect on your chances of success. When you get older and have more responsibilities unless you have a prior success you tend to become more risk averse and so less willing to start new companies and/or make the kind of decisions that would lead to either success or comple…
> But most successful entrepreneurs I know started their first successful company in their 20's or 30's, rarely 40's. Jeff Bezos? This is a myth. It is purported because most of the 30+ entrepreneurs are not vocal about their successes.
I can tell you that I'm pretty happy with my small business selling desktop software to "normies". But if my benchmark was Elon Musk or some VC funded dude having millions at his disposal ... well I'd be miserable, too.
But my benchmark is the small business next door and compared to them I'm doing very well. Heck, I don't need to engage "fellow indie hackers" on "$product hunt" and collect twitter followers because that's completely irrelevant to my bottom line. All I need is a good sales copy and a little SEO.
I don't know you but maybe re-aligning your goals would make you happy?
A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…
One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.
Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and prefer to yammer endlessly about tax cuts instead of thinking about how the welfare foundation can help entrepreneurship.
Fortunately there are some successful people who talk about this. For example in Finland the Supercell founders (gaming company with $10B exit) have been emphasizing the importance of the welfare structures for enabling entrepreneurship opportunities.